India plans to turn its cars into electric

With its growing air pollution that already become a public health crisis as well as an economic one, and the government is responding in a huge move.

The Indian government will make all its cars sold in the country to become electric by 2030.

India’s coal and mines minister Piyush Goyal

India’s coal and mines minister Piyush Goyal remarked at the Confederation of Indian Industry Annual Session 2017 in New Delhi.

During the press conference, he compared the initiative to the successful 2015 promotion of LED lightbulbs, which was intended to reduce energy bills.

“We are going to make electric vehicles self-sufficient. The idea is that by 2030, not a single petrol or diesel car should be sold in the country,” the official added.

CarAndBike

In a report of The Independent, Minister Goyal estimated that the electric car industry would require government assistance initially, but for only two to three years.

After that period, he assured that the Indian government expects the production of electric vehicles will be “driven by demand and not subsidy.”

“The cost of electric vehicles will start to pay for itself for consumers,” he said according to the International Business Times. “We would love to see the electric vehicle industry run on its own,” he explained.

Air pollution has been a major concern in India, local experts believed that it would become worst if the government will not act immediate solution and meaningful intervention.

In fact, earlier this year, Greenpeace has released a comprehensive report that attributed as many as 2.3 million deaths annually to air pollution in India.

Furthermore, the report— entitled “Airpocalypse” — calls air pollution a “public health and economic crisis” for Indians, pointing out that the number of air pollution deaths in the nation are only “a fraction less” than the number of tobacco deaths.

Meanwhile, a full 3 percent of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) is devoured by toxic smog in the form of healthcare and other remediation costs.

The international organization’s report warns that without immediate action and a “robust monitoring system,” the problem will worsen: “India’s pollution trends have been steadily increasing, with India overtaking China in number of deaths due to outdoor air pollution in 2015.”

India’s not the only country looking to phase out the use of internal combustion engine, but both Germany and Norway have the idea of banning all combustion engines by 2030 and 2025 respectively.

Because of the enormous growing of the pollution in the cities, some capitals are already looking to possibly ban diesel vehicles.